wordplay

ruiniscrazy:

wordplaying:

This is not what empowerment looks like. 

No, it is not. It is what fear, shock, and confusion looks like. This, however does look like someone who holds power over someone else,

Not to say that Kurt would ever actually do that, but he could. He knew that.

And so did Karofsky Dave.

And I think that was more or less the point of that person’s post. That there was more to that scene than what was obvious, that the situation was COMPLICATED, and the shift in power dynamics between Kurt Hummel and Dave Karofsky even more.

So much so, that oversimplifying the situation, like OP is doing here, is PROBLEMATIC. Treating this scene and that dynamic in this manner obscures the bigger picture here, that both boys are victims, both in radically different yet similar ways, and where they stand with that fact in mind should affect how they should be judged.

Looking at their dynamic in simple black and white terms, with one being the victim and the other a abuser, creates a deeply skewed viewpoint that completely misses what is actually going on between these two, and inevitably leads to accusations of RAPE and SEXUAL ASSAULT. Accusations which marginalize those who have actually experienced these traumas, which again, is PROBLEMATIC. 

I’m with this respondent up until the last paragraphs; I don’t disagree that both have been victimized. I would add that both have suffered the same structural victimization, and that Karofsky utilized that structural oppression for years even as he suffered under it, which is a point that the poster of the essay and this respondent seem to skip over. To be honest, I think that’s part of what’s driving people crazy, and in fairness the OP never stated that she was setting out to write an exhaustive presentation of the relationship between these two characters. It’s that things read out of context (like, perhaps, this gif set?) are often understood as more global in their application than they’re meant to be.

I’m not tripping over consent in the original essay; it’s hard to see from this vantage point in human history but it’s a complicated social construct, in the same way that all human rights are, ultimately, social constructs. I find the concentration on Karofsky’s consent issues to the exclusion of Kurt’s a little troubling, but in a way that I can understand, given the focus of her essay; this is not a new concept to me, believe it or not. Mostly I find that the OP oversimplifies the nature of power, which is why this gif focused on that.

I found this sentence in the original essay somewhat troubling: Dave is not exercising power over Kurt in this moment by kissing him without his consent; if anything, through this act, Dave is radically disempowering himself by according Kurt a piece of information which is potentially very damaging to himself because it fails to acknowledge that both are true. It’s not an either/or situation.

My point, made in this image set and elsewhere, is that (a) Kurt does not experience this as a shift in power dynamics; to him, the experience is the same oppression but on a different playing field; and (b) Karofsky’s disempowering of himself hands Kurt power he never sought and seems ill-equipped to handle for a while, and that is inherently a stripping of agency. Whatever happens later, Kurt still loses power over his body in this interaction and others. I’m thinking particularly of the scene in Furt when Karofsky bodychecks Kurt into the lockers and snatches the cake topper, when Kurt explicitly says he doesn’t want Karofsky anywhere near him. Not all power systems in the world end with the large structural ones the OP chooses to focus on.

So I don’t think I’m looking at things in black and white terms; I think I just see other shades of grey.

…And now I’m done talking about this, at least here. Drinks? Totally different matter. 

This is not what empowerment looks like. 

mskaylee:

icedwhitemocha:

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I’m not having the same issue with that essay as I think most people are having. I don’t think she’s arguing that it’s right that Dave kissed Kurt — in fact, she says clearly that it isn’t. I think she’s arguing that the way we talk about that issue has to do with a conceptualization of consent that doesn’t really take into account the ways in which society vilifies the consent of queer people.

I don’t agree with all of her arguments, but I don’t find it offensive in the way most folks seem to be finding it offensive.  I think my main issue is more that she equates the power of being the instigator of unwanted sexual advances with the power of knowing someone’s closeted queer identity, and I don’t think they should be compared in that way, especially without accounting for mitigating social factors (Dave’s a large guy, popular, likely to be believed and able to physically overpower Kurt, while Kurt is not likely to be believed about Dave’s sexuality, and probably not able to physically defend himself or overpower Dave).  They’re just inextricably different forms of power, and equating them seems weird in this instance. 

Maybe I’m just way out-of-touch, having one foot in academia as I do, but I don’t even like Kurtofsky, and I *do* care about consent in interpersonal relations.  She’s just saying that, given the social situation of queerness, power dynamics are more complicated than “Kurt didn’t give consent, so Dave is capital-W-Wrong, but if Kurt gave consent, everything would be ok.”  I don’t have an issue with that.  

I think I generally agree with you. I, like you, am troubled by her discussion of power dynamics, especially as it seems to completely ignore Kurt’s obvious fear after the kiss due to Karofsky’s threat to kill him if he tells anybody about it. It is exceptionally unclear to me that Kurt feels in any way empowered by his knowledge of Karofsky’s desire; rather, I would suggest that it further disempowers him, both by placing the burden of Karofsky’s psychological well-being on Kurt’s shoulders and also by placing Kurt within further physical threat from Karofsky. If we’re going to choose a larger cultural frame in which to understand those events, that’s fine, but I think it’s important to at least choose a frame that embraces the totality of the reactions and responses of all characters.

Finally: there is a long and fine tradition of fanwank, of employing whatever tools we have to rationalize and defend things that are troubling. It’s… what we do. I disagree with the conclusions of this essay, but tend to defend its right to exist and do think that it addresses some things that are worth thinking about, even if it sort of misses the point and willfully elides rather important parts of the narrative, i.e. what actually happened. 

Finally finally: I fucking hate the “who’s really a feminist” game. Even if I’d been on board with her, the last bit of that would have knocked me out of it altogether. 

suzteel:

I am just in awe at some of the people on my dash. How do you, week after week, mantain an optimistic point of view about this show? Have faith. Don’t automatically assume the worst. It’ll be okay. Trust me, we want to. Half my dash had almost convinced ourselves that they wouldn’t go there with Karofsky. And guess what? Oops. And Micheal was going to be the Blaine episode we were all waiting for. And after TFT, we would be seeing a lot more of physical affection instead of less interaction overall. How do you manage to be positive when the show disappoints so many times?

Like, I actually really want to know. Because I used to be that person, the eternal optimist, but Glee has somehow made me forget how to be. I would kind of like to be reminded.

Honestly? Fanfiction. There is nothing they can do that we can’t undo and redo better, and as long as we are still getting some character guidance from the writers & actors that is at least semi-consistent, I can work with that. 

I think this is the danger of caring too much about the narrative we’re being given, rather than the characters we’ve been given to play with. I think it’s why the best fanwork springs up around canons that are badly structured, inconsistent, riddled with holes and reliably incomplete. Especially in TV, where stories have to be spun out for longevity and ratings, giving too much power to the creators for your enjoyment is a really raw deal - there is no way you’re not going to get completely screwed. I think that if you can take what they make as the jumping off point rather than as something more definitive, you’re generally having a better time. 

I will admit that I am surprised by how surprised so much of fandom seemed to be by that scene. I was not, not particularly, not after Chris and Ryan’s interviews last fall/winter/whenever-that-was, and I thought all things considered it could have been a hell of a lot worse. And, generally, that’s my expectation level for this show: I expect it to regularly give me something that is at least marginally less soul-destroying than it could have been. That is ‘optimism’, Glee-style, for me. 

So, yeah. That’s how I manage to keep watching with some kind of perverse pleasure.

JUST as the Kurtofsky scene was happening. 

And I could tell because you all start screaming WTF bloody murder with no context and I had to get on chat right away and beg for details before I wigged out vicariously. 

And now my heart rate has normalized. Goddamn, y’all.

(Still haven’t watched. Still have to clean up dinner. Eventually, I think?)